Cybergang swipes $45M across globe

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NEW YORK — A worldwide gang of criminals stole $45 million in a matter of hours by hacking their way into a database of prepaid debit cards and draining cash machines around the globe, federal prosecutors said on Thursday — and outmoded card technology may be partly to blame.

Seven people are under arrest in the United States in the case, which prosecutors said involved thousands of thefts from ATMs using bogus magnetic swipe cards carrying information from Middle Eastern banks. The fraudsters moved with astounding speed to loot financial institutions around the world, working in cells, including one in New York, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said.

She called it “a massive 21st-century bank heist” carried out by brazen thieves.

One of the suspects was caught on surveillance cameras, his backpack increasingly loaded down with cash, authorities said. Others took photos of themselves with giant wads of bills as they made their way up and down Manhattan.

Others loaded that data onto any plastic card with a magnetic stripe — an old hotel key card or an expired credit card worked fine as long as they carried the account data and correct access codes.

A network of operatives fanned out to withdraw money rapidly in multiple cities, authorities said. The cells would take a cut of the money, then launder it through expensive purchases or ship it wholesale to the global ringleaders. Lynch didn't say where they were located.

The targets were reserves held by banks to fund prepaid credit cards, not individual account holders, Lynch said.

She called it a “virtual criminal flash mob,” and a security analyst said it was the biggest ATM fraud case she had heard of.

There were two attacks, one in December that reaped $5 million worldwide and one in February that snared about $40 million in 10 hours with about 36,000 transactions. The scheme involved attacks on two banks, Rakbank in the United Arab Emirates and the Bank of Muscat in Oman, prosecutors said.

Aside from New York, ATMs were plundered in Japan, Russia, Romania, Egypt, Colombia, Britain, Sri Lanka, Canada and several other countries, and law enforcement agencies from more than a dozen nations were involved in the investigation, U.S. prosecutors said.

The accused ringleader in the U.S. cell, Alberto Yusi Lajud-Pena, was reportedly killed in the Dominican Republic late last month, prosecutors said. More investigations continue and arrests have been made in other countries, but prosecutors did not have details.

An indictment unsealed Thursday accused Lajud-Pena and the other seven New York suspects of withdrawing $2.8 million from hacked accounts in less than a day.

Such ATM fraud schemes are not uncommon, but the $45 million stolen was at least double the amount involved in previously known cases, said Avivah Litan, an analyst who covers security issues for Gartner Inc.

“It's a really easy way to turn digits into cash,” Litan said.

Some of the fault lies with the ubiquitous magnetic strips on the back of cards. The rest of the world has largely abandoned cards with magnetic strips in favor of ones with built-in chips that are nearly impossible to copy. But because U.S. banks and merchants have stuck to cards with magnetic strips, they are accepted around the world.

Lynch would not say who masterminded the attacks globally, who the hackers are or where they were located, citing the investigation.

The New York suspects were U.S. citizens originally from the Dominican Republic who lived in the New York City suburb of Yonkers and were mostly in their 20s. Lynch said they all knew one another and were recruited together, as were cells in other countries. Each is charged with conspiracy and money laundering. A conviction carries as much as 10 years in prison.

Arrests began in March. Lajud-Pena was found dead with a suitcase full of $100,000 in cash. Dominican officials said they arrested a man in the killing who said it was a botched robbery, and two other suspects were on the lam.

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